From below, p.33
From Below, page 33
Vanna bent to pick the white dive line off the floor. She tugged on it, and all of Aidan’s thoughts of following a simple pathway to the outside faded. The cord snaked toward them, loose in the water, and Vanna caught its end.
They don’t want us finding our way out. We should have expected that.
Vanna dropped the severed line and pointed ahead, toward where the hallway met the boiler rooms. Aidan nodded. Vanna had spent the previous journey in the higher levels, but Aidan had been with Cove when they went past the furnaces. There were pathways that would take them back to the passenger halls. As long as the majority of the dead had been restricted to the hold—and he dearly hoped they were—they should be able to get out of the ship in less than ten minutes.
He just hoped his light would last that long.
The watertight door was still left ajar from the previous day. It was a narrow fit, and Vanna passed through first, her arm extended behind herself to give the tether slack for Aidan. He squeezed through after her, the canisters scraping the metal walls, and turned his light across the room.
The beam reached far less than it had on his first visit. Back then, the team’s lights had given him a sense of the scale of the cathedral-like room. Now, it could barely pick out the edges of the tangled metal walkways that created a weblike maze across the floor.
Aidan tapped Vanna’s shoulder and pointed forward and slightly up, to where he remembered the door Cove had found the previous day. They’d had to cross almost all of the boiler room to reach it, but it had brought them out near the main dining hall.
Vanna nodded and let Aidan lead. He ran his tongue over dry lips as he rose, putting space between himself and the tangled metal and wires.
He wasn’t used to being the lead on anything. But Vanna didn’t know where the door was, and with the weakened light, Aidan wasn’t sure if even he could find it on the first try. The thought of low oxygen dug at the back of his head, but he still refused to let himself look at the dive computer’s metrics. They were getting out as quickly as they possibly could; it would either be good enough or not.
Everywhere he turned, metal glinted out from beneath layers of sediment. The massive boilers rose on either side of the room, their dark holes impenetrable to his light. Above, scraps of the fallen walkways and piping created threateningly jagged edges across the ceiling.
A shadow shifted below. Aidan’s pulse quickened. Part of him didn’t want to look at it. Part of him didn’t have a choice. His headlight flickered as it turned downward.
Small, silvery disks of light shone from between the metal. Aidan’s pace slowed and his eyes narrowed as he tried to understand what he was looking at. Some of them winked in and out of view, like stars or dull fireflies. They were hypnotic. Strange, otherworldly. Beautiful. He couldn’t stop watching as they flickered, dozens of them creating a tapestry of dull lights across the disorienting wreckage of the floor.
His mind felt empty. He was drifting down toward them, he realized…and he couldn’t stop. Vanna gave a light tug to the cord connecting them. Aidan barely felt it. His legs no longer wanted to swim. Those winking, blinking disks of light below seemed to drain his buoyancy. They were drawing him down, sucking him toward them, and he no longer had the presence of mind to fight them.
A quiet thought floated through his head. Nitrogen narcosis. These were the symptoms the dive instructors had warned about. The looseness to his limbs. The quiet calm. The haziness, as though he’d been disturbed from deep slumber and was on the verge of falling back under again.
The lights continued to blink up at him. A night sky on the ocean floor, quietly calling him toward them.
Vanna tugged on the cord again, harder this time, and Aidan realized he was pulling her down with him. Something at the back of his mind told him that was wrong, that he shouldn’t do that, but the closer he got to the lights, the harder it became to think of anything else.
The nearest two disks of illumination winked out of view and back, and Aidan’s heart slipped. They weren’t stars. They were eyes. Horribly shiny, white-glazed eyes.
Strength returned to his legs in a rush. He kicked and thrashed to pull away from the countless bodies buried inside the silt and metal.
They were faster. The nearest figure reached its arms up, its spreading hands and too-long nails grasping for his legs. Aidan flipped, dropping his torso in order to gain height for his feet to put them out of reach.
Another body, one he hadn’t seen before, rose out of the darkness, hands extended like claws, and dug into Aidan’s neck on either side of his mask. Aidan felt the pinch through the dive suit and gasped, his airway squeezed until he struggled to draw oxygen.
The creature gripping him sank back into the silt and metal like a worm, dragging Aidan with it. More bodies rose around them, enormous plumes of sediment dragging over their twisted forms, as they latched on to him. Fingers dug into his legs, his stomach, his back. His mouth gasped wide as they pulled him into the thickly stacked layers of silt.
Only one part of him remained free: the arm with the cord attached. Vanna, tied to him, hauled on it as she urgently tried to pull him out.
Fingers worked their way around his dive mask, picking at the connections as they looked for a way inside. Something tore. Aidan gasped as achingly cold water poured over his chest, soaking through the fleece to press against his skin.
Fingers squirmed through the tear in his dive suit, their long nails picking through the material to reach his skin. He beat at them, but they wouldn’t let go.
Vanna still pulled on him. She wasn’t going to get him out though. Even Aidan knew it was a lost battle. Arms folded over his torso, his legs, his throat. The silt had become an impenetrable layer over his mask, blinding him.
The grips were like a vise, unyielding, as they sucked him deeper and deeper into their tangled nest of metal. They weren’t going to let him go. But at least she could still get away. As the ice water flowed into his suit, Aidan pulled his hands together and began digging at the knot. At the very least, he could set her free.
Vanna’s hands pressed over his, trying to stop him. He closed his eyes. Tears, both from the ache of the freezing water and the sheer terror of what he was doing, stung his cheeks. He pushed Vanna’s hands aside. The knot was stubborn. He shouldn’t have expected anything less; she was a cave diver after all.
Her hands left. Aidan, working blind, managed to find one loose end and began working it free. If Vanna was smart, she would have already begun on the knot around her own wrist. The hideous, silt-covered bodies had to be clutching at her too. She would have a limited window to escape.
Then, abruptly, the cord went taut. It jerked Aidan’s arm up, pulling it out from the sediment. Vanna had already tried to drag him free, but she hadn’t been able to get enough momentum. This was something more, something almost unstoppable, heaving them toward the ceiling.
The corpses clung to him. Hissing, gasping noises rose from them as they sensed their prey attempting to pull away. The arms tightened around his limbs, hard enough to make his bones ache.
But whatever Vanna had done, it was working. Aidan’s head pulled free from the bed of sediment and twisted metal. Specks of sand clung to his mask, but through it, he glimpsed Vanna suspended above him. Her legs bowed up, pointed toward the ceiling, while her head remained facing him, her arm pulled taut against the tether.
He couldn’t see her expression, but her helmet was fixated on him. She reached her spare hand back and tapped something on her belt.
The buoyancy compensator.
Aidan forced his untethered hand back into the squirming mass of bodies. He felt around for his own compensator, then flooded it with as much air as it would hold.
Hideous hands raked the length of his body as the sudden lift dragged him free. He exploded from the mounds of silt and writhing bodies, rushing alongside Vanna toward the ceiling. Their tether snapped tight, and Vanna pulled on it, dragging him closer. Bubbles spiraled around them as their ascent ran unchecked.
Aidan glanced above. The ceiling was nesting endless lengths of twisted metal and broken pipes. There was no time to stop their rise and no time to aim. He simply coiled over, back exposed and hands held up to shield his face.
The impact forced air from his lungs. He grunted, flinching, as his back slammed into the concrete ceiling. A pipe dragged across his sleeve, tearing through the dry suit. Not that there wasn’t enough of that happening to begin with. Fresh water flowed through the gaps as he stabilized, his back pinned to the boiler room’s ceiling.
Through the flickering flashlight, he caught sight of Vanna. She pulled herself closer to him. One hand snatched up his wrist, examining the cut. Then the other hand felt around the hood flap that had been torn. She took Aidan’s free hand and used it to form a grip across the tear, clamping it closed. It was enough to stop more water from entering, but Aidan wasn’t sure how much that might help. The cold water had flowed over his torso and was spreading into his legs and across his back. Already, he was shivering as his core’s warmth was sapped away.
Vanna moved in frantic, stiff motions as she adjusted the buoyancy compensators so they were no longer pressed so fiercely against the ceiling. Then she gripped him on either side of his head, her gloves squeezing his helmet, and touched her own screen against his. As she drew away, she raised one hand and pointed to her side. Twenty feet away was a door marking where one of the walkways had ended. It wasn’t the exit Cove had taken them through the day before, Aidan was sure, but it was still a way out—wherever out led to.
Aidan gave a shaky, breathless nod.
Trapped with the squirming corpses on the boiler room floor, he’d been ready to give up. A few more seconds would have been enough for him to undo the knot and allow himself to be pulled ever deeper into the endless silty floor. He would have breathed his last there, clasped in a deathly embrace that would never ever let him go.
He’d believed he was finished. But apparently, Vanna wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.
52
Cove didn’t know how far they plunged down. The stairs disappeared beneath her as she sank, seemingly endless. The enduring sound of clicking, cracking joints flowed from above. They never seemed to escape it. Worse, shapes moved at every landing they rushed past—creaking arms stretching toward them, glinting eyes leaving streaks of light across her vision.
One dark thought stuck in her mind. They’re funneling us. To where? There was no chance to break through though, no time to pause and assess. She could only try to match Roy’s pace. He was rushing down furiously, his ragged breathing blending into the static as he fought to put distance between them and the figures.
The stairs flattened out. Roy swung around, preparing for another bannister and another set of steps to carry them down, but there were none. They were at the lowest passenger level, which meant they were only barely above the Arcadia’s waterline.
Cove reached for her headlight and jostled it. The fluttering light refused to stabilize. It flashed across white-painted walls and heavy gray carpet. After the stairs, the hall seemed almost unnaturally quiet.
“Roy?” she tried, but if he heard her, he didn’t react.
The hall was stark compared to the higher levels. The paint cracked and peeled, leaving shards of itself across the floor, and the ornate sconces felt eerily out of place.
Cove dug through her mind as she tried to guess what part of the ship they might have found themselves in. Exercise rooms? Staff lodgings? It couldn’t be the hospital; they’d already found that on a higher floor. It didn’t help that their lights had grown so weak; she had to fight to pick out even the nearby cracks in the walls.
The stairs were at their backs. To their left was a narrow doorway with a tarnished lock below the handle. Some kind of staff room, Cove suspected. The path to their right continued on for a stretch. It was partially blocked; three chairs, either washed down during the sinking or carried there, tangled together. Cove couldn’t fully see its end, but it appeared to turn to the left.
Straight ahead were double doors. Square windows had been set at eye level, but they were too blurred by age to see through.
Take the hall, or try the room? Cove looked to Roy, wishing she could see him beneath the glaring mask. The creaking, clicking sounds had never quite disappeared beneath the static; their pursuers were still following.
The hall must wrap around the room. Whatever this place is, it probably has a door on its other side. They’ll both take us in the same direction. The question is—are we safer in a hall that might be blocked or a room that could hold additional surprises?
A crackling noise warned Cove that one of the creatures in the stairwell was flexing its neck. She made a snap decision and shoved on the doors. Technically, this level was still above the waterline. She held some small hope that it might have windows.
A fine curtain of silt grazed over them as the aged hinges responded. They were smoother than most of the doors Cove had struggled through before. She hoped that was because the wood had swollen less; she dreaded the alternative, that things had been moving through the door before them.
Her headlight struggled across foreign shapes. Railings to Cove’s left and right. Tiles beneath her. And some kind of depression ahead, vanishing into what felt like an ocean of darkness.
The pool.
The Arcadia, like most of the ocean liners from its time, had attempted to offer cutting-edge luxury. Including a miniature ocean in a ship surrounded by the ocean.
Roy tried to say something, but his words were lost in the static. Cove thought she could guess though. Do you think it still has water? Only Roy would use humor as a defense against pure fear.
Cove passed the threshold as the door closed behind them. The swimming pool had no windows. Opposite, across the pool, were the changing rooms and a doorway back into the ship’s higher levels. That would be their best chance.
Cove raised a hand, indicating to Roy that they were going to swim over the pool. He gave a short, terse nod.
Railings ran on either side of the pool, but the front and rear had been left clear for stairs. Cove inhaled to rise as her tiring leg muscles pushed her forward. Her light, faint as it was, glinted off a thousand tiles. The water inside the pool rippled in a way that bordered on hypnotic. She fixed her eyes on the faint outlines of the opposite wall and door.
Her mind snagged a second too late. The water in the pool…is rippling?
Cove looked down. Beneath her, cracked tile edges surrounded a deep rectangular depression. And inside that…
Cove choked on her own breath. The pool was full of bodies. Her headlight grazed across silk dresses and dinner jackets, crew uniforms and steward outfits. The bodies almost appeared to have melted into one solid form. As though they had tried to dig between one another and became trapped like that.
Some forms squirmed, long limbs adjusting as they tried to sink into the mass. Most of them were still though. Dormant, Cove thought, and clenched her hands as she prayed they would stay that way.
Roy reached out and gripped her forearm. He’d noticed too. The hold was tight to the point of being painful, but Cove didn’t try to push him away. They began moving more carefully, keeping their kicks soft enough that they barely disturbed the water. One of the bodies below them rolled over. Cove held her breath.
It wasn’t enough. A rush of air escaped her rebreather. It arced toward the room’s corner as Cove swallowed a moan.
The pool of bodies below shifted. Heads rolled over; lamp-like eyes turned toward them.
“Fast!” Cove yelled. She didn’t even know if Roy could hear her, but he certainly understood the message. He released his grip on her as they both pushed forward, legs moving as sharply as their drained muscles could stand and then some more.
Cove’s lungs ached. Her eyes burned. She fought against her instinct to look down. She was afraid that if she did, she might never be able to stop seeing them: the turning, grasping creatures with their howling jaws.
She could feel them though. They were surging upward, leaving their cloistered home. Cove tilted up, angling her trajectory so she rose as well as moved forward. Roy gasped. She shot him a fearful glance, but he was still moving at her side, one of the stiff limbs grasping in his wake.
The swimming pool’s edge was close. And beyond that was the silvery outline of the door Cove had been relying on. It was already open. Both Cove and Roy were moving fast, and the denizens of the pool were slow to stir. They were going to make it. Hope burned in Cove’s chest like a flare, pushing her forward, lending energy to her drained muscles.
A dark figure shifted into view beyond the door. Long strands of hair washed past flickering eyes as it turned to face them.
No…
More eyes blinked to life behind it. Their forms weren’t even visible in Cove’s light, but they hung in the water, unmoving, constantly watching.
No.
She and Roy had been funneled to this level for a reason. It was a dead end, and no matter which path they had chosen—hall or pool—they were not coming back out.
Cove felt paralyzed. Her legs, which had been propelling her forward, fell still. The writhing mass beneath them continued to rise, but her mind had dipped into emptiness. There was no way forward. No way back. The ceiling pressed close above them. Cove drew a stuttering breath and she was hit with the stark understanding that it might be one of her last.
Her headlight was nearly gone. She pulled her backup flashlight from her belt but knew it very likely wouldn’t make it much further. Both of Roy’s lights were out. And even if her flashlight was enough to break through the first wall of creatures blocking their path, she had little hope that it would carry them very far beyond. They were in one of the ship’s deepest realms, and soon they would be blind.
Think. There must be something. There must be.
Roy caught her arm and pulled. Cove kicked into motion, following him. He dragged her down, toward the doorway.
